Desolate
by Bishiglomper
Summary: Yugi's having trouble moving on after Atem left them for the afterlife. (Because in my headcanon, he would be a fucking mess; because I certainly am.) Angst. Lots of angst. Mild puzzle/blindshipping.


First of all, I would just like to dedicate this to all of you fuckers who sped my descent into this mess of a fandom.

My heart can't take this fandom, I swear to god.

So read it and weep, _muthafuckas!_

(No but srsly I love you pple and you might actually cry, 'cause I sure did and I wrote the damn thing.)

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He couldn't breathe. It was moments like these that caught him off guard.

.

The feelings that seemingly came out of nowhere that would suddenly grip his heart, squeezing it mercilessly until it felt like it would suddenly cease beating from the sheer struggle it maintained against that unrelenting pressure; in as how a rabbit's heart gives out before it's eaten by the predator in which it had been captured by.

Yugi, still in his school clothes, lay on his bed in the darkness of his bedroom. His hand gripped his shirt just over his heart, his knuckles white and trembling, wishing he could somehow relieve the suffocating pressure he felt there.

It had been at least a year and a half now; Since Atem had left for the afterlife.

Left him.

Everyone else had managed to move on. Sure, they missed him, but they could reminisce about the ex-spirit of the millennium puzzle without feeling more than the melancholy reminder of a good friend having moved on for better things.

But not Yugi.

Yugi couldn't think about his former partner without feeling like he was going to break. He couldn't replay those precious memories in his mind without them being tinged by heartbreak; abandonment.

He felt ashamed; feeling this way. As if by caring this deeply, he was tainting them; disrespecting and ruining those memories of the one that he had cared for so much.

.

Without his noticing, Yugi's arm had instinctively reached above his head to grasp at something that was long since gone, his fingers brushing against nothing but his bare bedpost. The puzzle was gone. It had been, for a while now; but for over a year he never failed to seek the comforting touch he had grown so accustomed to.

He didn't even have that to remember him by.

The only thing he had left were his cards. The deck that he and his other self had built, together. It was almost as if he left a piece of himself residing within them. Yugi could almost feel Yami's steadfast belief in himself, his friends, and the heart of the cards they had compiled. It was a bittersweet feeling, and while it brought those sweet feelings of the faith and friendship those cards inspired within him, they simultaneously brought that heart clenching feeling of regret and longing.

He couldn't stand it. He was a coward to his feelings, so he had locked them away. He hasn't touched them for several months.

It doesn't help that his friends kept pressuring him to take them out. That they thought it would be good for him; therapeutic even, for him to duel again.

He tried, for a while. He truly did. For weeks he actually managed somehow to appear to be coping with the events that had transpired in Egypt.

It was a facade, however, and it quickly exhausted him.

The more duels he played, the more empty he felt. Even playing his friends at school; even the duels that were instigated for some greater purpose; honor, revenge, to resolve any sort of seemingly important matter...

.

It _didn't_ matter. The act of dueling gradually took the light out of him game by game as the absence of his partner grew ever more apparent.

At some point he found himself staring at the cards in his hand, unseeing and incapable of forming any sort of strategy. He was just... done. Done with duel monsters. The game that had practically **been his life** , left him feeling nothing now except for this raw ache in his heart.

The boy forced himself up then, sweat beading on his temples, beginning to slide down his face. With shallow breaths he staggered from the bed to his desk, still pained from the physical stress this heartache caused him.

His fingers trembled slightly as he pulled his desk drawer open, trying not to look at the golden, hieroglyph-covered box that resided within, housing his deck; the same one that once housed the pieces of the millennium puzzle. He snatched the thin orange pill bottle from it's depths, slamming it shut as swiftly as possible.

Funny, that he stores his relief next to an object that triggers those sufferable feelings. He was a masochist, it seemed. Or just an idiot.

.

He held only his anxiety medication. Tiny white pills that could ease the pounding in his chest. He quickly dry swallowed one and carelessly tossed the bottle across the desk.

He kept a stash in there for emergency purposes. It wasn't so much he was ashamed of needing them, but that he didn't want to rely on them to make it each day. He didn't want to depend on that sort of thing for the rest of his life. He wanted himself to heal. He often tried to convince himself he didn't need them; didn't need to keep them readily accessible. Which is why they we're in a drawer.

.

His grandfather had helped him get the prescription shortly after those few weeks Yugi hadn't been able to keep up the facade. He still kept it up to some degree in public, around his friends, so they didn't worry; but he couldn't hide his feelings from his grandpa, at home.

Solomon understood his grandson wasn't just grieving a lost friend. He understood that they had a bond unlike any other, and that Yugi was reeling from the loss harder than any teenage boy should ever have to deal with.

Atem wasn't just a friend or brother; he was his other half. He was a part of Yugi's own soul. He honestly couldn't remember feeling a time before the puzzle. All he knew was the consonance their souls had thrived with, that harmonious feeling of being whole when they shared his vessel.

Now it felt like there was a cold emptiness that drafted in from where he imagined his partner's soul room had been.

He couldn't visit those familiar chambers anymore, not without the power of the puzzle. He had the sick feeling nothing would be there, nothing but his "playroom" that had been his own soul room. Nothing but a dark abyss across that passageway that had once connected their rooms.

He grimaced, wondering how his chamber might've looked now. The once bright-eyed, passionate youth that once felt he could take whatever the world threw at him, as long as his friends stood beside him...! Now only a hollow shell of his former self.

.

His body slumped heavily into the chair beside the desk. The prolonged racing of his heart made him light headed. A shuddering sigh escaped him.

Yugi didn't know what triggered him this time. He had just gotten home from school and flopped onto his bed, resting his eyes for a moment before he grabbed himself a shower.

.

 _Ah... That was it._ Maybe it had been the silence. He recalled his other self's presence greeting him at times like those. It was in those quiet times that they would talk to each other; about anything or nothing. About what the future held in store for them and their hopes and dreams.

Yugi always kept those conversations light; hopeful. He saw the apprehension in his darker half's eyes, the uncertainty he felt, whenever the subject came up about his past or lack of memories.

Yugi had told him once he would give him all his memories. He would have given anything up, even then. He just wanted to be near him. To feel the grounding safety he felt just by being with him. It had been so comforting. He trusted his other self, though dark and sometimes misguided in his determination to win. He trusted him nonetheless; with his body, soul, friends or family.

How often were their lives on the line with the only thing standing between them and the shadow realm, that dark spirit? Enough to know he valued them just as fiercely, if not more than Yugi himself.

He still valued those friendships more than anything. They kept him grounded most days. The days he would fall into quietness, not unlike the time before he formed those friendships.. The time he seemed so young, so fragile. They stood by him, unquestionably. Joey and Tristan had tried to toughen him up back then, get him out of that wimpy shell. They didn't now.

He would slip back into that insecurity sometimes. That fragile, depending little kid that could hardly believe in his own strength. The one who needed his friends to protect him.

.

That too, made him ashamed.

If there was anything Atem wanted to leave with him, it was the realization that Yugi had grown to be strong. Strong without him. That he had the capability and determination to do anything, as long as he had faith in himself.

.

 _"I'm sorry.."_ he whispered, barely audible had anyone actually been in the room. But they weren't. He was alone.

.

The boy's head lay on his desk, atop his folded arms as he waited for the medication to ease his suffering. He didn't know when the first tears had fallen.. just that now his sleeves were marked by the droplets, his eyes hot and watery, the wet feeling trailing down the side of his face where his tears had slid to saturate the fabric where it met his skin.

He opened his eyes, his vision was blurred. His expression pained, as he tried not to give in, trying to dispel the tightness of his throat. He was so tired of crying.

.

He was just so tired.

.

Tired of the feelings that threatened to drown him. **Tired of feeling this way**. Tired of the fact he was too weak to pull himself out of this pit of despair.

He was tired of the shame.

It was pathetic, really. Pining after someone so fiercely. It's not as if they were lovers.

But then he would think. They were soulmates. They surpassed love. Or so he felt. Two pieces that when came together were one soul; darkness and light. One couldn't exist without the other.

But somehow Yugi felt his light was dimming. Without his other half's presence to envelope him protectively, the freezing, unfamiliar darkness was slowly consuming him.

Sometimes he wished it would. Then maybe he would see Atem once more. Maybe if he gave into the darkness, it might just lead him home.

.

A shuddering sigh. Yugi sat up, his heart had finally began to slow, reaching a more steady rhythm. The constrictive grasp on his heart had loosened as well, giving him room to breath.

He sniffled and wiped the wetness from his face, using his already moisture-darkened sleeves to erase the evidence of his pain.

He would keep those particularly dark feelings locked away as long as he could. Until that too, would become too exhausting. Hopefully that day would never come.

He did want to heal. He didn't want to bear the weight of this pain for the rest of his life. He wanted to return to some semblance of a normal life. He just didn't have the slightest idea how.

His eyelids began to feel heavy, his body weak and exhausted from the emotional turmoil. He didn't feel like taking a shower anymore. He just wanted to sleep.

He sank to the bed, not even bothering to change into pajamas.

His eyes drifted close, tears burning at the corners of his eyes until they pooled so fully they ran over, streaming silently down the sides of his face.

.

 _'Why did you have to leave me, Atem? I told you I'd have done anything to help you...'_

Anything to make you happy. To make you smile.

.

'Why did you have to go where I couldn't follow?'

I'd do anything to have you next to me. To feel Your warmth again.

.

 _'I'd have given my life for you…'_

 _._

 _._

 _At least he had his dreams._

 _._

Where Atem didn't walk into that doorway filled with light.

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Where instead he embraced his diminutive other, finally able to physically touch him; a sensation his heart craved desperately for.

.

Dreams where he could pretend he never lost a part of himself.

.

And where he was never left to live in a world without first knowing that completeness. That feeling that had filled his heart to the brim, now left missing and wanting.

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And the youth drifted asleep, his alabaster skin pale in the darkness. The tears upon his face welled once more, before their final descent to land amongst the strands of wild hair the teen sported before finally starting to dry.

As he began to leave the conscious world and float in that moment of relief that was the limbo of unconsciousness, he could almost feel a warmth on his forehead, as if being tenderly kissed; Followed by a drop of wetness to land softly on his cheek.

The sensation was soon whisped away as he crossed into that comforting darkness of nothingness.

.

As if it had only been nothing but an illusion.

.

* * *

 **A/N:** I effing hate 's formatting omg

I tried to keep the name Yami out of it, which was weird 'cause I'm honestly not even past the third season, lol. But it takes place after the end, so Yugi would use Atem.

FYI, I have never in my life angsted (anywhere near this degree) before, so hopefully it came across as heartbreaking as it should have. **:D** 'cause it's exactly how I feel about that.

Now OH GOD somebody draw me art of Atem's heartbreaking kiss, _BECAUSE YOU GOT THAT, RIGHT?_ I need this. Somebody please make that happen, I'll love you forever.

Now go review. Do it. **Do it now.**


End file.
